How to Make a File Read Only

Last Updated: October 14, 2017

You create a file and put some important things in it; you don't want to lose it by deleting it mistakenly, and for safety reasons want a warning message before deletion (or for any other reason). Making a file Read-only is an easy and efficient way to proceed. If you don't know how to do this, see step 1 below to begin.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:
GUI Method

1
Right click on the file, you want to make it Read-only.
2
Click on the Properties tab from the context menu.
3
Click the Read-only check box belong to Attributes from on the General tab from the popped up Properties window.
4
Click on Apply and then click on Okay.

Method 2

Method 2 of 2:
Command Prompt Method

1
Open command prompt. You can open it by clicking on Start->Run, then type cmd and hit Enter. You can also press Win Key+R.
2
Write below codes and hit Enter to make your file Read-only.
- attrib +r "<file path="">"</file>
- Example: attrib +r "D:\wikiHow.txt"

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About This Article

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 10 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 102,026 times.

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Co-authors: 10

Updated: October 14, 2017

Views: 102,026

Categories: Basic Computer Skills